The present invention relates to a battery charging warehouse.
A warehouse as a battery charging system is disclosed by Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-50076. This charging system has a pallet rack including a plurality of shelves for holding cool boxes and some of the shelves are used as charging shelves for holding the cool boxes in charging built-in batteries of the cool boxes. Each charging shelf has at the bottom thereof a power feeding plug that is connected to an inlet socket of the cool box via a charging attachment. In addition, the charging system has a stacker crane that moves the cool box to the shelves (or storage shelves) other than the charging shelves after the battery charging for the cool box in the charging shelf is complete. The stacker crane has a lifting carriage with a slide fork that moves into and out of the charging shelves and the storage shelves.
To charge the built-in battery of the cool box, the stacker crane is moved with the cool box held on the lifting carriage and the lifting carriage is moved to the level of the charging shelf. Then, the slide fork is extended into the charging shelf to move the cool box into the charging shelf. When the cool box is placed on the charging shelf, the power feeding plug is connected to the inlet socket via the charging attachment thereby to charge the built-in battery of the cool box.
To move the cool box whose battery has been charged into the storage shelf, the lifting carriage is moved to the level of the charging shelf. Then, the slide fork is extended into the charging shelf to lift the cool box and moved from the charging shelf back to the retracted position. Thus, the cool box is moved to the storage shelf by the movement of the lifting carriage and the stacker crane.
In the charging system of the above-cited Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-50076 wherein the power feeding plug is located at the bottom (lower part) of the charging shelf, however, the cool box needs to be moved to the charging shelf in connecting the power feeding plug and the charging attachment to each other so that the charging attachment is located above the power feeding plug. Therefore, it is necessary to control the driving of the slide fork accurately, which makes it difficult to connect the power feeding plug and the charging attachment.
The present invention, which has been made in view of the above-described problems, is directed to a battery charging warehouse that permits automatic and easy connection of a charge connector to a battery connector.